Sounds of Spring

Frog choruses remind me of my childhood.
My grandparents moved from WI to AR in the mid 60’s after raising their family and welcoming many grandchildren to the world.
One spring Grandma said she missed the sounds of spring, the frogs waking up and singing in the swamp outside my mother’s front door, and the robins coming to wake us up in the morning. So I decided to go and make a recording of the frogs for her. We were trading tapes as letters around that time anyway. So I took my cassette recorder out to the swamp and recorded my letter to Grandma. Talking to her over the sounds of spring. I wanted to be sure it was getting everything so I played it back. I could hear nothing more than my voice talking. I was so disappointed that my grand idea had failed that I took the tape back into the house and finished the letter in there. I mailed it off.
When Grandma got the tape she called to ask me why I had stopped recording outside as it was the best tape she’d had in quite some time. I said that she couldn’t hear the frogs anyway so why bother, plus if I took it in the house I wouldn’t have to worry about if the batteries were dying. She assured me that yes she could hear the frogs and proceeded to play it for me over the phone. It was then that I realized I just couldn’t tell the taped frogs from the real ones.